inherit the benediction, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, although with tears he had sought it.”[1] Something of the same kind happened to the wicked Antiochus, as you may read in the Second Book of the Machabees. This unhappy king had his eyes opened at last, when he fell into a disgusting and grievous illness. “Ah,” he sighed, as he was being eaten alive by worms, “it is just to be subject to God.”[2] I acknowledge my crimes, O God! and beg for a respite of my life, that I may amend and make my repentance known to the world. I have sworn to extinguish the Jewish people; now I promise to make them as free as the Athenians. I intended to destroy Jerusalem; now I will make it greater than any city of the East. I have plundered Thy holy temple; I am sorry for having done so; if I recover I will endow it with the most costly treasures, and double the number of the sacred vases, and provide for the expenses of the sacrifices out of my own revenues. What greater signs of true repentance could one wish to have? But that is not all. I promise, moreover, said the dying king, to become a Jew, and to travel throughout the world, not as a conqueror, as I have hitherto done, to oppress the people, but as a missionary and an apostle, to make known to them the power and glory of God: “Yea, also, that he would become a Jew himself, and would go through every place of the earth and declare the power of God.”[3] What would you say, my dear brethren, if you saw a man dying in such dispositions? Would you not look on him as a saint and wish to be in his place? But hear what the Scripture says of this penitent; words that I should not dare to utter if they were not from the mouth of God Himself; words which as long as the world lasts will remain as a warning to sinners who trust their salvation to a death-bed repentance: “Then this wicked man prayed to the Lord, of whom he was not like to obtain mercy.”[4] And why not, O God of mercy? “Because,” answers Cardinal Hugo, “he did not ask for mercy in due time, nor with a sincere heart.”[5] Not at the proper time, because he put it off till the last moment; nor with a sincere heart, be-
- ↑ Postea cupiena hæreditare benedictionem, reprobatus est; non enim invenit poenitentiæ locum, quanquam cum lachrymis inquisisset eam.—Heb. xii. 17.
- ↑ Justum est subditum esse Deo.—II. Mach. ix. 12.
- ↑ Super hæc, et Judæum se futurum, et omnem locum terræ perambulaturum et prædieatururn Dei potestatem.—Ibid. 17.
- ↑ Orabat autem hic scelestus Dominum, a quo non esset misericordiam consecuturus.—Ibid. 13.
- ↑ Quia nec tempore debito, nec corde vero veniam requisivit.
